Once upon a time, there was a politician who said,
Let me be as clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a VP. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. . . .
You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and you know teenage children, that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that’s off limits. . . .
Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I ever thought that it was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that—they’d be fired.
That politician was very good at saying things that made people think highly of him, and so in the fullness of time, he grew up and became President of the United States. But along the way, he picked up a traveling companion, a Scarecrow named Joe who said whatever came into his mind, including using Gov. Palin’s youngest child to score political points; and the politician didn’t fire him, or stop him, or tell him to back off. And this was a sign that maybe he didn’t mean what he said after all. And the press continued to do what he’d told them not to do, and he said nothing further; and this was another sign.
And then after the politician became president, there came the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, at which it is traditional to have a comedian make fun of the president, to show that the president can laugh at himself and take a joke. But since this politician didn’t like laughing at himself and taking jokes, they had a comedian to make fun of his opponents instead, including a crude “joke” about Gov. Palin and her family. The comedian told this joke right in front of the politician who had once said,
Let me be as clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics.
In any proper fairy tale, this should be the cue for the politician to step up and say, “I said this was inappropriate, and I meant it. I said we need to respect those with whom we disagree, and I meant it. I said we need to base our politics on political issues, not on character assassination, and I meant it. Stop this nonsense right now.” This should be the cue for the politician to defend the one unjustly abused.
Did he? No . . . he laughed. All his words about the good, the true and the beautiful were just words.
Political fairy tales never end right.